The Comprehensive Content Creation Process (2020)

SEO is all about driving high-quality organic traffic to your website. One of the best ways to attract that traffic is by providing your audience with the answers they want right when they want them. Fortunately, there is a particular type of content that does this better than any other: comprehensive guides. These guides are your ticket to providing your audience with the information they need, building your authority and driving more high-quality traffic to your site.

In this tutorial we are going to break the topic of writing comprehensive content into three key topics:

What are Comprehensive Guides?
Benefits of Comprehensive Guides
Instructions for creating Comprehensive Guides

If you don’t get all the way through this tutorial in one sitting, we recommend you bookmark it and come back to it when you are ready to start driving more quality traffic.

SEO is all about driving high-quality organic traffic to your website. One of the best ways to attract that traffic is by providing your audience with the answers they want to their questions right when they want them. Click To Tweet

What are Comprehensive Guides?

An ultimate guide, or comprehensive guide as we like to call it, is content that goes into great detail about a topic relevant to your business.

A form of thought leadership content, comprehensive guides (a.k.a. cornerstone content, definitive guides, ultimate guides, beginner’s guides, etc.) give you the ability to channel your expertise into content that will rank well because your audience will really want to read it.

To familiarize yourself with the types of content we are talking about, check out this Ultimate Guide to Ultimate Guides and explore some of the different types of content it includes.

While creating these guides might seem time-intensive, crafting one can happen a lot quicker than you might think and be far more impactful than you would expect.

Benefits of Creating Comprehensive Guides

Provide Potential Customers & Clients with Valuable Information

Comprehensive guides are packed with highly valuable information in the form of essential knowledge and actionable insight. When you provide your audience with this kind of content, they are more likely to come back to you for more.

Position Your Business as an Authority

Every time you create an ultimate guide, you show people your expertise. This gives prospective customers, and Google, more reasons to trust you, your business, and your website.

Acquire Links

These guides are great at attracting backlinks, especially when paired with a proactive outreach strategy.

Improve Your Rankings

One of the most important ranking factors in Google is RankBrain. RankBrain focuses on two key factors:

Dwell Time: How long a Google searcher spends on your page.
Click-Through Rate: The percentage of people that click on your webpage in the search results.

Ultimate guides are a great way to please the RankBrain algorithm because they keep people on a page longer and prevent people from bouncing or pogo-sticking to find better results.

Capture Position Zero & Voice Search Results

Featured snippets are blocks of content that are featured in the search engine results. They contain content extracted from a webpage. These results are often described as “position zero” as they rise above the traditional organic search results.

Studies also show that voice search results are often pulled from “position zero” content.

Ultimate guides are a great way to leverage your expertise in a way that resonates with search engines and encourages them to place your content in featured snippets.

Now that you know what these comprehensive guides are and how they can benefit your business, let’s take a look at how to create them.

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How to Create Comprehensive Content

Don’t just start writing about a topic. While it might create an interesting piece of content, it will likely have more gaps than a more structured one.

Here is a process to follow to create comprehensive guides:

Step 1 - Select a Good Topic

Step 2 - Explore the Questions People Ask About Your Topic

People who want to know about fly fishing in Colorado are usually looking to learn about a few different things. The rivers in Colorado, the type of fish in them, where to go fishing, etc.

If your content only addresses the rivers in Colorado, it’s probably not going to rank well when people search for information about fly fishing in Colorado. And, people are probably going to bounce back to Google in search of better information. A comprehensive guide covers most, or all, of the questions people ask relating to your topic.

Here’s how to research your topic.

Identify the Questions People Ask

Ask yourself “What are the most common customer or client questions I get related to this topic?” Write down your answers in the form of a list of questions.

Then start adding to your list.

See what the internet is asking about your topic by typing it into answerthepublic.com.

Then, type your topic into Google and see what “People also ask” about your subject.

Once you have a hefty list of questions it’s time to identify what keyword you want to target.

Do Keyword Research

Scan your list of questions to see if any keywords or key phrases jump out at you. If we looked at ours, something like “fly fishing in Aspen” or “Aspen fly fishing” might.

Identify a Focus Keyword
Take those keywords or phrases and go into Pathfinder SEO to use the keyword research tool. Research each and identify a great focus keyword.

Identify Secondary Keywords
After you find a focus keyword, it’s time to identify some secondary keywords. Secondary keywords are conceptually relevant keywords and phrases related to your topic. They should also support your focus keyword.

We also call secondary keywords semantically related keywords. They help show Google you know what you are talking about by adding context to your content. For example, if we are talking about fly fishing in Aspen, we better mention “Roaring Fork River Fly Fishing” (the main fishing river in Aspen), otherwise, Google might see that our content isn’t as authoritative as it could be.

You want to make sure you include some secondary keywords with decent search volume sprinkled throughout your guide. Make a list of all the ones you want to include.

The End Goal of Your Research

When you are done you should have:

A list of questions that people ask about your topic.
A focus keyword for your guide.
A list of secondary keywords you are going to include in your guide.

Once your research is complete, put together the framework for it.

Then, type your topic into Google and see what “People also ask” about your subject.

Step 3 - Organize Your Outline by Themes

Take a look at all your research and clump questions and keywords together by themes.

Let’s go back to our Aspen fly fishing example. Let’s say we identified five themes based on people’s questions and our keywords: Aspen’s rivers, gear for fishing in Aspen, types of fish, where and when to fish, what types of flies to use.

Populate each theme with the questions you are going to answer and the secondary keywords you are going to make sure you use when writing about it.

Theme: Aspen’s Rivers

Questions to Answer:
What rivers are in Aspen?
How many rivers are in Aspen?
How big are Aspen’s Rivers?
Which is the best Aspen River for fishing?

Keywords to include:
Roaring Fork River
Frying Pan River
Capitol Creek

Once you have fleshed out each your themes, organize them into an outline for your guide. Try to establish a good flow of content where you answer the most important and popular questions at, or near, the beginning.

Tip: You can use your outline to create a table of contents at the beginning of your article. This will give people an idea of what’s in store and show them just how comprehensive your guide is from the get-go. You can also add page jumps to help them easily navigate.

Step 4 - Identify What’s Missing

Step 5 - Start Writing

Now that you know what you are going to write. Sit down and do it.

Check off your questions and keywords as they get included in your content to make sure you don’t miss any.

Don’t be afraid to use questions about your topic as headings. As mentioned, they might give you the ability to appear in position zero search results and voice search results.

Remember that your readers don’t have all day. Try to make your content as dense as possible. Avoid verbose writing. Get down to the nitty-gritty quickly.

As for the length of your article, shoot for 1,800 words or more if you want your guide to appear in first-page search results.

Most importantly, remember that writing quality content for SEO purposes is all about writing for your audience, not search engines.

Step 6 - Add Visuals and Calls to Action

With 1,800 words or more, there are bound to be numerous opportunities to include high-quality visuals in your content.

Include images, gifs, screenshots, videos, and graphics. Adding these types of media will help you illustrate your points, help you break up your content, and make it more engaging. With that said, don’t just put them in to put them in. Only include them where they add value.

Don’t forget to give credit where it is due, and don’t be afraid to link to external media or resources. Just make sure your links open in a new window or tab.

Here are some resources for creating or finding helpful visual assets.

Calls to Action

If you do a good job writing your guide, there’s a good chance your audience is going to be left wanting more. Give them ways to get to know you and your business throughout your guide.

Include internal links to products/services you offer when you reference them.
Place a call to action in the closing sentence.
Place a newsletter subscription pop up or form on your guide or at the end of it.
Maybe use a plugin that encourages people to download the guide as a PDF upon exit intent.

Get creative. The bottom line is you want to make it easy for people to get more of the great information you are offering and remember you.

Step 7 - Give it a Name

The easiest way to title your guide is to call it “The Ultimate Guide to ______” or “The Definitive Guide to _______”. However, both of those options are on the verge of being overused.

Get a bit more creative.

The Only Guide to _____ You Need
The Quick Guide to _____
The Complete Guide to ______
The Essential Guide to _____
The __Type of Person___’s Guide to _________
Etc.

Don’t forget to include your keyword!
Step 8 - Publish and Promote
It’s written, titled and ready to send into the world. Hit Publish!

Whatever you do after that, don’t just sit back and wait for the readers to roll in because it might not happen. You need to get the word out about your content.

Step 8 - Publish and Promote

It’s written, titled and ready to send into the world. Hit Publish!

Whatever you do after that, don’t just sit back and wait for the readers to roll in because it might not happen. You need to get the word out about your content.

Promotion Tips:

Schedule it into your social calendar (multiple times).
Send it to your email list.
Tell friends, partners, colleagues, and everyone else in your network about it and ask them to share it.
Syndicate your ultimate guide.
Turn it into a PDF people can download as a content upgrade or lead generation tool.
See who else has written about the topic and ask for a link in their content.

The better you promote your content, the better it will perform.

Step 9 - Measure

Don’t forget to track your guide in Google Analytics and Google Search Console to see how it performs. If you followed this step-by-step, you should be pleased with what you see.

If it’s not getting the kind of traffic you would like, figure out what you can do to improve it. Ask yourself these questions:

Is this the best piece of content on this topic?
Is the most relevant content on this topic?
Did I include all my keywords?
Is there search volume for this Keyword and topic?
Is my writing readable?
Is the content helpful?

Step 10 - Iterate

Times change and so should your content. Schedule content updates to your guide on a periodic basis that works for you. Once every six months should do the trick. If that seems like a lot, shoot for at least once a year.

Go back to that question about what’s missing when you look at it with fresh eyes. Is there something that people are asking about in the comments or that you now notice you left out? Address it during an update.

Don’t be afraid to let all that great research you did inform smaller pieces of content that you can link to from your guide and vice versa. You can’t do a deep dive into every sub-topic in your guide, so why not do it somewhere else of your site or blog?

Final Thoughts

Comprehensive guides, although an incredibly useful tool, shouldn’t be used as a standalone blog tactic. They can act as great cornerstone content and supplement a diverse set of content types that you publish as blogs.

Try creating one and you might discover one of the most powerful tactics in your SEO tool belt.

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Erik Wardell

Erik loves breaking down complex SEO topics into understandable instructions anyone can follow. In his role as an SEO coach, he guides Pathfinder SEO customers through the SEO process on a daily basis, giving them helpful tips, instruction, and advice along the way.